Jamie Cullum is a joy to audiences and a gift to music. I have boasted about his #SongSociety where he encourages artists to live with their mistakes without apology as part of the creative process. He gives himself and musicians an hour to create a favorite cover track, and then record it live to share. It is genius what he comes up with.
Last year he came out with an incredible Holiday disc. The Pianoman at Christmas. All original tunes. The biggest track that made headway was the infectious Hang Your Lights. Because he is English and somewhere in the world where jazz and pop collide, most people are not aware of his work. Similar to Ed Sheeran, he is a cute elf-type that looks like something out of the Hobbit empire. As to new holiday classics, I have been noticing this to be a trend in Holiday music from a younger generation of artists. Instead of relying on old chestnuts which are great, but can only be reinvented a limited number of ways, I applaud them all and have found around 50% of them to be pretty darn good. But this holiday LP has not a clinker in the bunch.
What I found really revealing is this 18 minute #makingofvideo that he released. Here he takes time to show his process, the great musicians he collaborated with... But like a true storyteller, he lets us know the Why of each song. How it spoke to him and what he wants to share in the telling. So many layers and such great music. Please, if this guy is not on your radar look him up. And check out both these videos for some true Christmas Spirit!
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